Transcript

Can you hear us from the room? Can someone confirm? How about now? Can you hear us now? Yes, thank you. Loud and clear. Thank you very much, Rahana. Yes, let's continue. Yes, we should continue then. Can you introduce online Councillor Abdelullah and Maisha? And anyone else? And anyone else? I'll start. Councillor Abdelullah St. Catherine is in Wapping. Good evening, everyone. Thank you. Councillor Maisha Vega in the St. D'Anderson Ward. Thank you. Great. Carol Bowes, Legal Advisor. Sarah Milsom from Lumera. Councillor, are you to declare? Nothing to declare. Nothing to declare. Thank you. Now to the move, the moving to item number, agenda number, item number, and agenda. Our audience wants to know the pink paper decisions. Can you explain? Follow it. Agenda number. No, it's a bit her. Farhana. Farhana. There are any apology or absence? I've not been made. Five minutes. Page number nine and 18. Can you invite members to approve the restriction minute of the meeting? Hold on. Chair, I've not received any petition. Agenda number four, submission, referral from pension board, supplementary agenda, page number three. John Johnson to present their report, please. Yeah. Yeah, thank you, Chair, and good evening, everyone. The board met last Monday and covered many of the same reports as you've got on the agenda today, so I don't propose to go through everything in detail because we'll be looking at those in a few moments, but I did want to highlight just two or three issues that emerged in the meeting in particular. The first of these was around membership of the fund and the importance of promoting benefits of joining the fund for employees. What we noticed, and you'll come on to this a bit later, that large numbers of staff either don't join the fund or leave shortly after joining, and obviously there's benefits of being a member of the pension fund, and certainly the board felt it was very important that this should be promoted in more detail going forward. Some of the work's already started following the employee meeting that took place late recently that you've got on the agenda shortly, so perhaps touch on that then. The other issue I wanted to highlight was around, it's in paragraph six of my report, which is about the risk register. We certainly feel there's a bit more work to be done on the register, not simply including issues in the register, but also target dates and more information on mitigation so that it becomes a more effective assurance document, because it is a key document in the governance of the funds. And finally, a reminder for me, and I know I've mentioned this before, the importance of knowledge and skills training. There is a knowledge and skills online training portal that has been developed, and I think officers have circulated a link for that. And it's very important, I think, that everybody, that's all board members and all committee members, actually a complete list so that a training package, that your skills and knowledge are brought forward in that way. That's all I wanted to say at the moment. I might actually raise a couple of points later on, but happy to answer any questions now if there is anything you wish to raise or comment on. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yeah, okay. Appointing the risk register, you were referring to numbers of reds and numbers of yellows and numbers of so forth. It would be dangerous to add these together. And also, some of the risks are unavoidable. It is very much a case of mitigation. You can't control what happens to markets, whereas other things are very much under your control. So, I think it's important to get the... I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you. Do this committee have any questions or comments that wish to speak? Yeah. John Johnson, yes. Yeah. Can I just comment at this stage? I did... When I spoke earlier, I talked about membership issues. And I just wanted to refer you to page 40. And we did discuss this at length in the board last week. Looking at the numbers there, you can see the total is 49,400 odd. But within that category, there's a significant number in status numbers three and zero, where people have either not joined the fund or left the fund. And it's that issue that prompted quite a long, long discussion last Monday. And we would encourage the committee and officers as well to promote benefits of the... 5%, but that's a good couple of hundred additional membership. Could you just explain the difference and how come there's an increase? You know, benefited from the undecided. And a good many of them probably decided to take the others. Thank you. Thanks for that, Paul. And I think, is that because we are holding more sessions and there's more awareness? Is that what it is? Thanks, Jack. The event we held in January obviously came... These, the different groups of people that are not on the scheme. And if that is right, what are we doing to encourage people to get on the scheme? Thank you, Chair. Yes, I think we can see the... From anecdotal evidence that quite a few people that contacted us said that they were now... That they are well clued up on the benefits of the LGPS. And also, we are engaging with groups that have reached out to us. For example, the Tower Hamlets and particularly the new members of staff. So, I think one area we recognise we really need to do better is the people joining for the very first time. So, we need to do, we need to raise our game there. So, we need to work, you know, new joiners is up to scratch. And then we follow that up to make sure that, you know, they have all... The project on this committee and this analyst for the TH non-scheme member... ...to earlier was held on the 9th of January and again on the 24th of January of this year to also attain the event. And on the back of the upcoming actual evaluation, I think we see it as a... Yeah, go on. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to add to Paul's comments and also going back to John's comments about raising awareness of the scheme. So, this was well received, it was fully booked and I think it really helped people, you know, they came with questions and they helped with the awareness. We're looking to continue to do this going forward on a quarterly basis. Actually, in best solution employer and other stakeholder to deliver and I invite Paul to present your report, please. Thank you, Chair. The risk register, you'll find in your pack and fraud and error. Chair, officers are still trying to find, well, judgment is not complied with or done so incorrectly. There are control measures in place, you know, for the risks and the actions to make in feedback in terms of, you know, putting a bit of, you know, if you like more flesh on the bones and timing. So, in that respect, still, you know, work in progress. I think steps have been taken already in so far as the, you know, progressing well. And to date, I think the reports and the analysis that late February and it's going to last for seven months. So, all the way to September. So, does that affect our, this year's financial reports for audits? Thank you, Chair. Just before this meeting, I had the opportunity to sit in a meeting with Audit. Yes, obviously, the knowing where things are at and the fact that, you know, we've got a very live, you know, work plan. That's upcoming. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, thank you, Chair. Yeah, it is, um, officers, um, wish to include, um, training. There's some sort of support from the day one and committee. I know there is, uh, some sort of, uh, uh, if someone wants to do, um, at their own pace, because the, um, the modules and the, uh, portal, the, um, low light portal, the local authority, uh, learning, uh, portal, uh, run by, um, Hyman's, um, has, it covers all the areas that, um, members, uh, would require training on. And the reason why it's designed to be flexible is to allow, uh, members to learn at their own pace. So, the, the starting point is to, uh, do the, uh, knowledge assessment, uh, to, uh, figure out, you know, where to, to start. And then the modules, I think the eight or nine modules on the, uh, portal, they already say on a quarterly basis, you will have that meeting. But the, um, starting point is to register on the, um, Hyman's portal where you have all the, um, information there, the training information. The members of the committee and members of the board, um, have been registered and enrolled on both the, um, you know, national knowledge assessment and the, um, learning portal. And there is another, uh, uh, link to the, um, pensions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .